Quotes About Fortune

Fortune blinds men when she does not wish them to withstand the violence of her onslaughts.

A man's fortune is frequently decided by his first address. If pleasing, others at once conclude he has merit; but if ungraceful, they decide against him.

Activity makes more men's fortunes than cautiousness.

A man can hardly be said to have made a fortune if he does not know how to enjoy it.

The greatest evil that fortune can bring to men is to endow them with feeble resources and yet to make them ambitious.

I tired the back door -- unlocked. Truley the Man Upstairs was smiling down on me.

In man's life, time is but a moment; being, a flux; sense is dim; the material frame corruptible; soul, an eddy of breath; fortune a thing inscrutable, and fame precarious.

There is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen.

The man who is always fortunate cannot easily have a great reverence for virtue.

Luck is a strong horse; it can carry man to very distant places!

The concept of fate is an open insult against man's willpower!

Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them. —SUZANNE NECKER, WIFE OF JACQUES NECKER, MINISTER OF FINANCE

What men call accident is God's own part.

The gods give that man some profit to whom they are propitious. [Lat., Cui homini dii propitii sunt aliquid objiciunt lucri.]

No man has perpetual good fortune. [Lat., Nulli est homini perpetuum bonum.]

Man's fortune is usually changed at once; life is changeable. [Lat., Actutum fortunae solent mutarier; varia vita est.]

Fortune, by being too lavish of her favours on a man, only makes a fool of him.

The man is mechanically turned, and made for getting. . . . It was verily prettily said that we may learn the little value of fortune by the persons on whom Heaven is pleased to bestow it.

Many exceedingly rich men are unhappy, but many middling circumstances are fortunate.

I should rather labor as another's serf, in the home of a man without fortune, one whose livelihood was meager, than rule over all the departed dead.

And not a man appears to tell their fate.

Even-handed fate Hath but one law for small and great: That ample urn holds all men's names.

Men fall from great fortune because of the same shortcomings that led to their rise.

Many men, seemingly impelled by fortune, hasten forward to meet misfortune half way.